


Détente et Dinosaures

by fredbassett



Series: Stephen/Ryan series [85]
Category: Primeval
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-01
Updated: 2013-12-01
Packaged: 2018-01-03 03:55:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1065470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fredbassett/pseuds/fredbassett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stephen and Ryan are still on secondment to the French anomaly response team.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

A long neck rose gracefully above the surface of the water and a small head set with two dark eyes turned to fix Stephen with a positively reproachful look.

“I don’t think he likes the boats,” Stephen commented.

“I don’t remember asking his opinion,” Ryan said.

A pair of wrap-around sunglasses concealed Capitaine Etienne Lafarge’s opinion of their running commentary on the efforts of his men to herd a reluctant plesiosaur back through an anomaly in the middle of an extremely picturesque – and all-too public – lake, but when he spoke, there was no mistaking his amusement. “Monsieur le Maire thinks we should keep him here as he’ll be good for tourism. I tend to agree. My boss takes a rather different view.”

“You can’t use your EPMs,” Stephen said quickly, before the Frenchman could issue any instructions to the soldiers in the boat closest to the creature. “Not unless you want it to sink to the bottom of the lake and drown.”

The Brigade Forces Spéciales de Terre had access to very effective non-effective non-lethal weaponry in the form of some extremely souped-up tasers that Stephen was keen to acquire for the ARC’s anomaly response teams, but this was neither the time nor the place for the electro perturbateur musculaire rifles to be deployed

“Then what do you suggest, mon ami?” There was no challenge in Lafarge’s voice, just simple enquiry.

For all Ryan’s description of the Special Forces captain as the most psychotic fucker he’d ever worked with apart from Blade, Stephen had seen no sign of that so far. The captain was calm, courteous – apart from an ability to swear in several languages that would have caused even Joel Stringer to applaud – and good-humoured, despite the plesiosaur’s best efforts to prevent its repatriation.

“How fast can your men drive on these roads, Etienne?” Stephen asked, an idea starting to form in his mind.

“Probably a lot faster than me,” Ryan said. “And you know what that did to your nerves, sweetie.”

“I wasn’t suggesting I go with them,” Stephen said. “Payback’s a bitch, honey. As the nearest thing this team’s got at the moment to a creature expert, I’m going to stay here and keep our friend entertained, no doubt under Capitaine Lafarge’s imperturbable supervision. You’re the one who’s going to get a white-knuckle ride to St. Leon and back.”

It took a moment for Ryan to cotton on to Stephen’s train of thought and then his eyes widened as he very definitely jumped to the right conclusion. Stephen fought to suppress a grin and failed.

Etienne Lafarge pushed his sunglasses up to nestle amidst his short, ash-blond hair, revealing pale grey eyes rimmed with a disconcertingly dark halo; eyes that were currently gleaming with knife-sharp amusement. “St Leon from here is approximately a 50 minute drive each way. A small wager should ensure that our driver will endeavour to get there and back in less than une heure, I feel. Now is either of you going to enlighten me on the reason for the visit to St Leon?”

“No. Unless you’ve guessed by the time Ryan leaves the car park, the drinks tonight are on your expense account.”

With a resigned expression on his face, Ryan quickly transferred from their commandeered speedboat to one of the small inflatable boats that they’d been using in the abortive attempt to herd the plesiosaur back to its own time, while Lafarge shouted instructions to his men.

Stephen watched as the small craft sped back to the sandy beach at the water’s edge. He had a feeling this was one bet that the Frenchman was going to lose.

“And what do we do now?” Lafarge enquired. “Sadly, I failed to pack a picnic.”

“We do our best to keep our friend entertained for an hour,” Stephen said. “If he dives, then we run the risk of losing him.”

In a lake approximately six kilometres long, in the region of 500 metres wide and probably up to 20 metres deep in places losing the plesiosaur was going to be their greatest problem. Three of Lafarge’s men were kitted up in full sub-aqua gear, but hadn’t yet been ordered into the water. Memories of the loss of one of Ryan’s men in very similar circumstances were still too vivid for Stephen to want to take any unnecessary risks, and Lafarge had seemed happy to bow to their greater experience.

Until a military Land Rover, driven at no doubt highly dangerous speeds, returned all Stephen could do was admire the scenery and hope he could do something to maintain the plesiosaur’s interest. As the creature didn’t appear overly fond of the inflatable boats, Stephen sent the second one on a quest to commandeer as many fish as possible from the nets left by the fishermen who had been forced to leave everything behind when the members of the Gendarmerie Nationale had rather enthusiastically evacuated the immediate area. But even the robust attitude to policing that the French habitually employed wouldn’t be able to prevent high-powered binoculars or camera lens obtained an excellent view of the proceedings from any of the neighbouring hills, although they had been able to enforce a no-fly zone in the vicinity, which was one less thing to worry about.

“I think he likes you,” Lafarge said, his sunglasses now firmly settled back on his nose.

The plesiosaur leaned towards Stephen, seemingly determined to prove Lafarge right. Stephen lifted up one hand, palm vertical, and received a gentle head-butt in what was probably the strangest high-five ever.

“I like him, as well,” Stephen said. “Any damage he does is going to be wholly accidental, which is why I want to make sure we get him – or her – home safely. The creatures we have to deal with are stranded out of time, frightened and sometimes injured. Yes, they hunt and kill, but they’re only following their instincts. Someone in your organisation must view things the same way or they wouldn’t have instructed you to carry EPMs and use them where you can.”

“La Directrice de le Centre Recherche Scientifique holds strong views on such things. She is committed to studying these anomalies and returning the creatures to their own time alive, wherever possible.”

“She’ll get on with Cutter.”

“Does he like fierce women?”

“He’s got past history with them,” Stephen said quietly. He could see that his own expression, reflected back at him in Lafarge’s sunglasses, now looked guarded. Stephen quickly transferred his attention to the plesiosaur and was both surprised and relieved when Lafarge didn’t press him further on the subject.

He looked away, suppressing thoughts of the past, even though he knew it was unlikely to stay buried forever. The scenery surrounding the lake was beautiful; green hills rising up on three sides with the one to the south, overlooking the water, topped by a church constructed in the honey-coloured stone that abounded in the region.

The Lac du Causse was obviously a popular spot in the summer months for tourists and locals alike, and the current warm, sunny weather had brought people out in droves. Fortunately, only the top two metres of the glittering ball of time was visible. Some hasty improvisation meant that the site of the anomaly was now surrounded by orange buoys bobbing in the water from which were suspended large nets, hastily fashioned into an enormous string bag surrounding the rip in time, hopefully preventing an exchange of fish and any larger creatures. The newts would remain in place until the plesiosaur could be persuaded to swim in that direction.

After 15 minutes of doing little more than play pat-a-cake with the curious, gentle creature, Stephen saw one of the inflatable boats returning with a catch of fish. Lafarge’s men had been told via their comms link not to use the outboard engine, so the boat was now being rowed back out to join them.

When the fish had been handed over, Stephen held one fish out, feeling rather foolish under Lafarge’s sharp gaze, but he was gratified when the small head bent down and took the fish out of his hand, quickly swallowing the treat and butting against his hand for more.

“You have definitely made a friend,” Lafarge said after the second fish had met with as much approval as the first.

“Then let’s hope he’s happy to hang around for more until Ryan and your men get back. By my reckoning, you’ve got about 40 minutes to work out what the plan is and after that you’re definitely buying the drinks.”

Stephen took hold of another fish and offered it to his new-found friend.

* * * * *

Etienne Lafarge stared at the results of Ryan’s foraging expedition and laughed. “Most inventive, mon ami. If this works, the drinks are on me for the rest of your stay here, not just tonight.”

Ryan stared at the large model of a plesiosaur that he had appropriated from the Parc aux Dinosaures in St Leon sur Vézère. Its head was titled at a rather odd angle, and at some point had obviously fallen off and then been re-fixed with the aid of duct tape painted a greenish-grey, which was now holding it together. The head and neck topped a bulbous body with short flippers resting on the sand of the beach. It almost certainly wasn’t the best representation of a plesiosaur in existence, but it was likely to be the only one within a 50 kilometre radius of the Lac du Causse, so they’d just have to make do with what they had and hope Stephen’s plan worked.

“Let’s get it tied it to one of the inflatable boats,” he instructed.

Five minutes later, they dragged the boat and its improbable occupant onto the water. Ryan took up position at the oars of the second boat, while one of the divers settled himself at the rear of the small inflatable and paid out a long rope to put as much distance as possible between then and something that looked like the results of a student prank on Loch Ness.

“Take it nice and slowly,” Stephen said over the radio. “I want him to focus on that little beauty, not you.”

“Little beauty? Are we looking at the same thing?” Ryan muttered, as the other two divers slipped into the water and finned alongside the boat, ready to unhook the net from the buoys.

“He’s looking at you.” There was a note of excitement in Stephen’s voice. “Or rather he’s looking at Nessie.”

“Who wouldn’t?” Lafarge commented. “I imagine that computer technicians from the Ministry are already doing their best to stop this whole thing going wild on the internet.”

“Going viral,” Ryan said.

“Thank you. Going viral.”

Ryan spared a glance at the object of all their attentions slowly circling the sleek white speedboat containing Stephen and Lafarge. The plesiosaur was definitely looking in his direction now, although whether their decoy stood any chance of keeping its attention for long was another matter.

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” Lafarge said, a note of concern creeping into his voice for the first time. “But the light from the anomaly is less bright than it was before. That generally means…”

“It’s about to close,” Ryan finished for him. “Your mayor might be about to get his wish.”

“He’s right. You’re going to have to get a move on, Ryan,” Stephen told him. “Get the boat past the anomaly then make sure the divers shove it sideways and hope it gets through.”

The divers had been thoroughly briefed by Lafarge and knew that under no circumstances were they to get closer to the anomaly than the orange marker buoys. The metal of the sub-aqua tanks would feel the magnetic pull and they would need to make sure that they stayed close to Ryan’s boat rather than the decoy at the crucial moment.

Over the radio link, Ryan could hear Stephen quietly urging their visitor to go home, speaking warmly but urgently, even though there was no prospect of being understood. He watched as his lover held up a fish and threw it in the direction of the decoy, clearly hoping to transfer the plesiosaur’s attention away from him and towards the other boat. For a long moment, Ryan thought their efforts were doomed to failure and then he watched, almost not believing his eyes, as the small head on the graceful, swan-like neck turned away from the speedboat.

“That’s it, beauty,” he heard Stephen urge. “Go on, take a closer look, she might just be your type.”

Gliding effortlessly through the still water of the lake, the plesiosaur closed the distance between it and the decoy, whether attracted because of the resemblance – however slight – of the ridiculous model to its own kind, or just by the same simple curiosity that had drawn it to the speedboat and Stephen, Ryan couldn’t say.

Doing his best to keep his boat moving smoothly but slowly, Ryan barely dipped the oars into the water. The divers were doing their best to stay inconspicuous, but the time was soon coming when they would need to release the nets from the buoys and that would be the most dangerous part of the whole manoeuvre when they would be at risk of something else gate-crashing the party. Ryan’s instincts as a soldier were telling him that that what they should be doing was hitting the creature with a low charge from Lafarge’s EPM and then getting the divers to see if they could bundle it back through the fading anomaly, but he knew there was no way Stephen would countenance that plan, and even Ryan had to admit that the chances of being able to haul the plesiosaur up from the bottom of the lake if it did sink were probably not good.

“Keep moving, Ryan, you’ve got his attention,” Stephen told him. “We’re going to need to drop that net when he gets a bit closer.”

“Just say when we’re good to go.”

The oars dipped into the water again and the boat glided on, passing close to the anomaly, but its magnetic pull was clearly waning now and Ryan felt none of the familiar tug at the metalwork of the borrowed HK416 assault rifle slung across his back. He drew in a long breath and kept watching as the plesiosaur swam up alongside the other inflatable and bumped its head against that of the plastic figure, paying more attention to the decoy than it was to the two divers bobbing in water next to the buoys.

“Gather up the nets,” Stephen instructed.

As soon as he heard the words, Ryan lifted up one hand and brought it down in a chopping motion. The divers, who had kept their eyes fixed on him rather than the pantomime being enacted in front of them, promptly unclipped the nets from the buoys and dropped below the surface of the lake, drawing it away from the anomaly.

“Clear,” Ryan said, pulling harder now on the oars, hoping that if he could only lure the plesiosaur slightly closer to the anomaly it might feel whatever strange attraction that caused so many creatures to investigate the shimmering balls of light and simply decide to return to its own time.

The decoy was within two metres of the anomaly now, the rope connecting the two boats almost within the shining shards sparkling about the surface of the water. Ryan wasn’t sure what would happen if the rope actually passed through the anomaly, but it was becoming increasingly clear that he would have to do something to draw the plesiosaur’s attention in that direction. He quickly laid both oars inside the inflatable and gave the rope a sharp sideways tug, pulling it forwards on a different tack, moving towards the anomaly now, not past it.

“He’s following,” Stephen said quietly. “He’s bloody following. Do that again, Ryan. We can’t risk a diver that close, not if it’s about to close any minute. See if you can get the decoy actually into the anomaly. He’s interested in it, I swear he is.”

Hoping Stephen wasn’t just indulging in wishful thinking, Ryan jerked the rope again. The inflatable spun slightly, as if the metal on various parts of the craft was now close enough to the anomaly for the magnetic pull to exert its influence. The plesiosaur darted forward like a hen suddenly picking at grain and the boat spun around until it was face to face with its replica. As rough as the model was, there was definitely a likeness between the two; even the greenish-grey colour wasn’t dissimilar. Curiosity drew the plesiosaur on until it was almost touching the ever-moving fragments of time.

Half of the decoy boat was now actually in the anomaly, gradually being drawn out of sight.

“Hart, does it matter if we lose the boat through there?” Ryan asked urgently.

“No. Getting Nessie back is all that matters.” Stephen drew in a sharp intake of breath. “He’s going through, Ryan, he’s bloody going through!”

The decoy was out of sight now. Ryan watched as the plesiosaur seemed to hesitate for a moment, its head almost within the anomaly. The anomaly could close at any minute, and if it did, the creature’s head would be severed, making a mockery of all their efforts to return it safely to its own time.

In one fluid movement, the plesiosaur dived beneath the surface, vanishing from sight, but whether it had returned home or simply gone deeper into the lake, Ryan couldn’t tell.

An indrawn breath and a rude word in French sounded simultaneously in Ryan’s ear.

A heartbeat later, the anomaly vanished, cutting the rope connecting the two boats, and taking with it the inflatable and its decoy. Whatever happened, the Parc aux Dinosaures was going to need a new model, but whether the local mayor had gained a tourist attraction, Ryan simply didn’t know.

Ripples disturbed the surface of the water just beyond the anomaly site. One of the divers, rapidly followed by the other, bobbed into sight. With demand valves still clamped firmly between their teeth, verbal communication was impossible, but there was no mistaking the clenched fist with thumb firmly uppermost that one of them thrust into the air.

Ryan let out a long breath, feeling his stomach start to unclench for the first time since he’d rowed out onto the lake.

“You did it, Hart,” he acknowledged, making no attempt to keep the warmth out of his voice. It had been a bloody mad idea, but it had worked.

The drinks were on Lafarge.

And his bosses would have to foot the bill for a new model plesiosaur.


	2. Chapter 2

“Détente et dinosaurs!” Lafarge declared, handing bottles of cold beer to Stephen and Ryan.

Stephen took a long drink, finishing half the bottle in two mouthfuls. The travelling fridge in the back of one of the military Land Rovers the French Special Forces team used was well-stocked, and the soldiers appeared to have no qualms about drinking in uniform once the job had been done.

“Technically, it wasn’t a dinosaur,” he commented. “If it’s in the sea or the air, or from earlier than the Triassic, it’s not classified as a dinosaur.”

Lafarge grinned. “I will remember that, mon ami.” He clinked his bottle against Stephen’s. “It was a mad idea and at times I did not think you would pull it off, but it has been a pleasure to work with you both. You are refreshingly inventive. And it is good to have your knowledge of the creatures.”

“You need someone with paleontological knowledge on your team,” Ryan said. “Can’t your Ministry find one?”

Lafarge shrugged. “I will tell them we need someone. Today has proven that. But you know what fonctoinares are like. Like the brontosaurus they have a small brain located somewhere in their arse.” A swift smile lit the man’s face. “And yes, I know they are called apatasaurs now and the idea about the brain was never true, but it is still a good description.”

“You’ve been doing some research,” Stephen commented. He wasn’t surprised. The captain was intelligent and resourceful, and would do whatever he could to give him and his men an advantage.

Stephen finished his beer and accepted another. They’d got the plesiosaur back to its own time for nothing more than the loss of an inflatable boat and a life-sized plastic model. That classed as a very definite win in his book.

“I need a piss,” Lafarge announced. He strolled away, beer bottle in hand, heading for a nearby building amidst the trees that ringed the lake.

While he was gone, Stephen and Ryan checked their weapons back into the gun cases in the Land Rover, making a note in the weapons’ log that no rounds had been fired, nor had the electro perterbateur musculaires been used. They would be returning to the UK in three days time, their secondment to the French team at an end. From his conversation the previous day with Lester, it appeared that the Ministry of the Interior had been as good as their word and had provided the promised information regarding both the EPM weapons and details of their research into the anomalies. Connor and Cutter were now working on the information and had, in return, provided the French with the means to build their own anomaly detection device.

The cooperation between the Home Office and the Ministry of the Interior had probably come as a surprise to all concerned, going against long engrained habits of secrecy that had enabled two countries to continue in ignorance of each other for nearly two years. Stephen strongly suspected that other nations were also facing the same threats whilst playing their cards equally close to their chest, but unless like the British and the French they could break old habits of secrecy, the cloak and dagger behaviour would almost certainly continue.

Once they’d dealt with the gear, Stephen leaned against a tree and waited for Lafarge to return. One of the gendarmes had come over and was talking to Lafarge’s second in command, a tough, laconic sergeant called Raoul Garin. The French was too rapid for Stephen to follow, but it was clear that the policeman wanted to know when he could lift the cordon around the lake and reopen the surrounding roads.

Lafarge was taking longer than Stephen would have expected and as he eventually walked back across the edge of the beach there was an air of tension that had not been there before. Stephen glanced at Ryan and raised his eyebrows, but all he got in return was a puzzled shrug. The gendarme started to walk towards Lafarge, but was waved away with a curt word and a dismissive hand gesture. The Special Forces captain jerked his head towards the waterline, leading them away from any listeners.

“There was a woman,” he said without preamble. “Dark-haired, tall, dressed in khaki fatigues.”

Despite the heat of the day, Stephen suddenly felt cold, and his stomach lurched unpleasantly.

“You know her,” Lafarge stated, and Stephen could feel the man’s eyes on him behind the ever-present wrap-around sunglasses.

In the face of Stephen’s silence it was left to Ryan to answer. “She’s the wife – or maybe ex-wife – of Nick Cutter, the leader of our science team. She took a trip through an anomaly nine years ago but has reappeared on and off since. She’s trouble.”

“Why am I not surprised by that?”

“Because there’s no such thing as coincidence. What did she want?”

“To deliver a warning. She claims there will be a creature attack like no other we have seen and that this creature cannot be handled with soft gloves. She says it must be killed. Can we trust her?”

“Not as far as we can throw an apatasaurus,” Ryan said flatly.

If Lafarge was surprised that Stephen hadn’t yet spoken, he gave no sign of it.

“Where is she now?” Ryan demanded.

Lafarge shrugged. “Gone. I turned around to see if either of you were close enough to see her but when I looked back she had vanished. There were footprints in the sand, yet they disappeared no more than a metre away from me. She said she wanted to help and wanted to speak to my superiors.”

“What the hell is she playing at?” Stephen said, doing his best to cover the shock he felt at hearing Helen’s name.

Every time she appeared he had to brace himself for whatever games she had in mind. He knew full well that he should have broken the news of the affair to Cutter years ago, but the time had never been right and he had allowed things to slide beyond the point of no return.

Stephen knew all too well that he had a bad habit of not confronting his problems, but Helen had meant a lot to him and in the aftermath of her disappearance, he’d clung to the only Cutter left to him, doing what he could to offer comfort to a man stretched almost to breaking point. Stephen knew he was just trying to do penance for his own sins, but when it became clear that Helen was not going to return, confession seemed pointless, nothing more than self-indulgence to salve his own conscience. But Helen’s return had changed all that and he knew that the longest friendship of his life was now hanging by a very slender thread.

“I’m telling Lester,” Ryan said, thumbing the screen of his mobile phone. “Make sure your bosses know she’s pure poison, Etienne. Whatever she offers, she’s not to be trusted. If she hands you an apple, check for the fucking worm.”

Fifteen minutes later, the small convoy of military vehicles pulled out of the car park beside the lake, leaving the gendarmes to re-open the roads and deal with the general public, whilst no doubt some harassed employees of the Ministry of the Interior were no doubt doing their best to diffuse the inevitable public relations shitstorm that had quite probably already reached global proportions. But hopefully any film of the decoy plesiosaur would help discredit claims that the lake had been visited by a real one.

As they pulled onto the main road from Brive to Perigueux, Lafarge’s mobile rang. With a Gallic disregard of the law, the soldier took the call one-handed while continuing to drive. He listened intently, swore violently and tossed the phone onto Ryan’s lap.

“Something has happened at La Roque Saint-Christophe. We have reports of panic and civilians dead.” Lafarge wound his window down and made a hand-signal in the air; a clenched fist. He then proceeded to drive as if the devil was at his heels.

Stephen and Ryan had cycled past Roque Saint-Christophe earlier in the week and it had been on their list of places to visit. It was said to be the largest cliff dwellings in Europe and had been a stronghold in the Wars of Religion in the 16th century, but that was all Ryan knew about the place. They’d been intending to go there at some point during their stay, but it looked like a free entrance ticket had just landed in their laps.

* * * * *

The Land Rover came to a halt in a spray of gravel on the edge of a car park hidden amongst trees at the foot of an imposing cliff. The Vézère river wound through the valley close to the base of the cliff, leaving enough room for a road but little more.

Ryan could see a huddle of people clustered to the side a wooden building that appeared to house a bar that in ordinary circumstances would be dispensing snacks and ice creams. They all had the glazed looks of those caught up in some sort of disaster, a look that Ryan had seen more times than he cared to remember. A pair of ambulances was parked nearby, with two paramedics lifting a stretcher into one vehicle while two others appeared to be running a makeshift triage centre by the bar.

Lafarge jumped out of the Land Rover and headed straight for a young gendarme standing by the side of the road, his service automatic in his hand and a wary look in his eyes. In rapid French, Lafarge demanded to know what the fuck was going on.

Ryan couldn’t follow the reply, but a moment later, Lafarge gave the order for his men to arm themselves,

“It seems our mystery woman was right. Something is loose on the terraces of the old fort. It – they – have already killed several people and injured others. More were hurt in the rush to evacuate the scene. There are people still trapped up there but his boss told him to wait for us.”

“Description?” Stephen demanded, already moving to the gun cases at the rear or the vehicle, where Raoul Garin had started handing out weapons.

Lafarge shugged. “Very little of any sense, but whatever it is moves fast and kills easily.”

“We need more than that,” Ryan said. “A few minutes talking to the survivors could save more lives.”

The French captain hesitated briefly, but then acknowledged Ryan’s words with a nod and went over to conduct a rapid interrogation of some of the shocked tourists.

Ryan and Stephen accepted the weapons Garin handed to them, strapping PAMAS semi-automatics to their right thighs, long-bladed military fighting knives to their left, pulling on light body-armour built into khaki equipment vests equipped with a multitude of well-stocked pockets containing everything from enough ammunition to wage a minor war to stun grenades, tear gas and laser flares. There was probably even a kitchen sink stowed in there somewhere just waiting to be discovered. The HK416 assault rifles completed the ensemble.

Garin cocked his head on one side speculatively as he stared at the rack of EMPs. “We leave the toy guns behind this time, I think?”

“Looks that way,” Ryan said, wondering what Helen Cutter knew about the current incursion.

It was typical of the bloody woman to turn up, deliver a cryptic comment like someone throwing pearls before swine and then fuck off again before any questions could be asked. She certainly wasn’t the sort to help old ladies across roads or take stones out of horses’ hooves. But she did have badges that she no doubt wore proudly for being a pain in the bloody arse and causing a fuck-ton of trouble.

By the time the squad was kitted up and ready to go, Lafarge was back. As the captain pulled on his own equipment, he gave a rapid-fire briefing, first in English then in French.

“The best description I got was from a teenage boy who plays a lot of video games. He seemed to be the only one who even got a look at them. He says whatever it is looks like a starving chimpanzee and bounces around like a rubber ball. One dropped down from above into a group a few metres away from him and ripped a man’s head off as easily as plucking fruit from a tree. Another ran along a metal handrail, grabbed a child, and climbed up to another level carrying it like a doll. They’re fast, they’re deadly and even his dinosaur mad little brother had no idea what they were.” Lafarge swept his eyes around the group. “We go in hard and we shoot to kill. No one goes anywhere alone. Stay in radio contact at all times.”

After Lafarge’s briefing, they jogged across the car park to the path that led up to the entrance building. The young gendarme thrust a folded piece of paper into each of their hands as they passed him. Ryan glanced down, wondering what the hell the man was playing at when he realised that he’d just been given a leaflet that unfolded into a pictorial map of the fort. He spared the man a quick smile. The gendarme’s smart thinking could easily have saved lives. None of them knew the layout of Roque Saint-Christophe but the tourist plan and information would provide valuable intel. They paused for a moment in the entrance building to familiarise themselves with the plan, then moved forward in teams of four.

Ryan and Stephen were with Lafarge and a young soldier called Gilles Jacquet. He reminded Ryan of Kermit, both in terms of age and looks, although Kermit didn’t smoke foul-smelling French cigarettes, but he did carry a picture of his wife and child and show it to anyone who expressed any interest. But Ryan knew that looks were deceptive. The lad had been in the French Special Forces for two years and had been on Lafarge’s squad of improvised dinosaur hunters from the first mission. There were fourteen of them in total, three teams of four and two specialists, a medic and a communications expert. Ryan and Stephen had taken their place on Lafarge’s team. The two specialists would do their best to remain mobile, lending support where needed.

As ever, when going into action, Ryan felt adrenaline start to fuel his movements, coupled with the icy prickle of anticipation that he could never manage to dispel. He knew Lafarge’s team were good, but he missed his own seasoned team, hardened in battle against both human opponents and the most dangerous creatures that the animal kingdom could throw at them. He missed Lyle’s brand of dark humour and the lieutenant’s preternatural danger sense as well Ditzy’s calm competence, Blade’s ability to relish even the most hopeless situation, Finn’s sharpshooting…

As they crossed the tiled floor of the gift shop, all thoughts of his own team left Ryan’s mind as he focussed solely on the task at hand. Even though Stephen was at his side, Ryan had long since accustomed himself to going into danger with the man he loved, and it had never crossed his mind to suggest that Stephen should remain with the other civilians, even though it seemed they would be facing something beyond his area of expertise. Stephen’s shooting and tracking abilities and his general experience with things from beyond the anomalies made him valuable to any team.

Lafarge took point, a combat shotgun in his hands and an HK416 slung over his back. Ryan followed, with Stephen behind him and Jacquet bringing up the rear. They would move on as rapidly as possible through the fort, with the groups behind checking that nothing nasty was waiting behind them in the wings. With the boy’s description of events fresh in his mind, Ryan knew they couldn’t afford to think only in one dimension. Roque Saint-Christophe was built on several levels, with stone staircases and even some rope climbs linking them, and from what they had heard, the creatures could easily travel between the different stages.

A stone gateway in front of them was guarded by a realistic model of a medieval soldier complete with helmet and gleaming metal breastplate, pointing a replica antique rifle down on them from above. But on this occasion, the threat was already within the stronghold.

Ryan could hear screaming inside the fort and knew then that the evacuation had by no means been complete. The ones left behind would almost certainly be the oldest and most infirm, maybe with some children; the weakest abandoned when the rest of the herd had fled. He had seen at least one set of parents doing their best to get back inside and being restrained by the gendarmes, the parents of the child who had been carried off, maybe, or possibly others who had got separated from their children in the panic that must have ensued. Anyone found alive would be evacuated by the medic, Jean-Marc Andre, and his partner, Eric Manaud, the comms man.

The plan was to push on through the stone labyrinth to what was known as the Grand Abri, a natural stone shelter nearly 300 metres long that, according to the short description in the tourist handout he had spent a moment speed-reading, had once housed around 30 houses in medieval times. The plan showed a split in the route just past the guard-house.

Lafarge ordered Garin’s team to take the upper route, checking any hiding places en route to the Grand Abri. The other team, led by a hard-faced, unsmiling man called Dupuy, would follow Lafarge’s group, peeling off if necessary for other pathways. The fort had five levels in total, but they would concentrate on the main one for now; that was where the prey was to be found, so that was where they presumed they would find the predators.

A scream echoed around the rock faces, abruptly chocked off, the main sound dying before the echoes. In response, Lafarge quickened his pace, moving gracefully over an uneven walkway cut into the rock. The creatures they were hunting weren’t the only predators on the hunt that day.

“Red 1 to Silver Leader, we have wounded,” Garin announced over the radio. “A woman with a broken leg plus a man with a ripped chest. Evacuating now.”

“Understood, Red 1.” Lafarge moved on without breaking stride.

Ahead, the terrace they were on abruptly narrowed and Ryan could see a doorway into a narrow tunnel barely wide enough for two to walk abreast. The lighting level was low and Larfarge pushed his sunglasses up onto his ash-blond hair as they advanced. They passed a group of life-sized models clustered around what appeared to be a cooking pot. Ryan quickly flipped on the torch attachment on his borrowed assault rifle and swept the scene with the beam of light, half-expecting something to jump at him from the shadows.

Lafarge stepped out of the man-made tunnel into almost blinding sunlight, but his reflective glasses were now back in place and he made the transition carefully.

A long thin arm swept down from above, claws poised to rip at the captains face. Lafarge pressed himself back against the rock and fired his shotgun at almost the exact moment as Ryan snapped off a three round burst from his assault rifle. The report from both weapons was deafeningly, reverberating in the narrow tunnel.

“Contact!” Lafarge announced, his voice barely raised about normal levels. He edged out of the tunnel, looking up at the rock above. “It’s gone,” he announced.

Ryan followed him out, noting a splatter of dark blood on the honey-coloured stone. “Did you see it?”

Lafarge shook his head. “Just the arm.” He turned and Ryan saw the deep gouge a claw had left on his left cheek. Blood was welling from the cut and trailing through stubble to drip onto his equipment vest. The cut was below his eye line so wouldn’t be in danger of fouling his vision but the coppery smell could act like a magnet for the predators.

First blood had fallen to the opposition.


	3. Chapter 3

Ryan stayed hard on Lafarge’s heels with Stephen a metre or so behind. So far they had seen nothing more than a glimpse of what they were up against, just a brief flash of a skeletal arm with three long claws that had slashed at Lafarge’s face leaving behind an angry red furrow on his cheek.

The French captain calmly reported his injury to the unit medic over the radio and then moved on up a flight of steps beside an enormous stone buttress overhung with dense vegetation at the top.

Ryan had taken no more than three steps before his radio burst into life at the same time as the sound of shots filled the air, reverberating off the rock walls and echoing down the valley. Something rustled in the undergrowth about his head. Ryan wheeled round and discharged a three round burst as he heard Garin yelling, “Contact!” Leaves and some twigs fell around him, but of their adversaries there was no sign.

The next words were too fast for him to follow as radio protocols were thrown to the winds in the face of clear and present danger. But he didn’t need to be able to follow the short sharp burst of communications to know that they had a man down and that it was bad. The mental map he had of the fort, taken from a brief glance at the tourist leaflet, told him that if they turned left at the next junction, going against the sign-posted flow followed by visitors, they would reach Garin’s group.

They covered the distance to the other team fast and on high alert. Garin was on his knees next to one of the soldiers with Jean-Marc Andre, the medic, on the other side. Over the sound of cries of pain as the wounded civilians were hurried out of the fort, Ryan could hear the laboured breathing of the injured man. The soldier’s face was a mess of blood, but Ryan recognised Serge Payet, a quietly-spoken lad in his mid-20s from the Auvergne region. Ryan hadn’t spoken much to him, but he knew he was a good and capable man.

A good and capable man who was now bleeding out from a gaping slash across his throat.

Andre pressed a field dressing to the wound but Ryan could see that it was hopeless. Blood was frothing from the man’s mouth and the choking sound he was making was one that Ryan knew he wouldn’t forget in a hurry. Lafarge pushed his sunglasses back on his head and exchanged a look with his medic. Andre simply shook his head. Garin held Payet’s hand tightly and continued to talk to him in steady French, his voice betraying no hint of the fierce anger on his face.

Lafarge issued a series of rapid orders. In response, the other member of Garin’s team started to hurry the wounded civilians away down another flight of steps. The man with the broken leg was supported by two others, but it was clear that the movement was costing him dearly. Despite that, the group had to keep moving. Garin bent down, said something to Payet too low for Ryan to hear, and then he followed the civilians, alert for danger from above or below, acting a sheepdog to a frightened flock, keeping them moving at all costs.

Andre was now holding both hands to Payet’s throat, but the horrible gurgling continued unabated. The fear and pain in Payet’s eyes as he struggled feebly, aware of nothing beyond the horror of a violent death, was painful to watch and Ryan’s natural instinct was to so something – anything – to abate that suffering, but they risked other deaths by remaining frozen around the tableau of sudden and violent death.

Lafarge’s grey eyes were as blank as a stone wall as he gestured with his shotgun back the way they’d just come. “Go! I’ll follow you.” His tone and his expression were not ones that Ryan would have cared to argue with. The French captain held a thin-bladed knife in his hand and Ryan knew full well what he intended to do.

He turned away and nodded to Stephen and Gilles Jacquet, the fourth member of their small team, gesturing to Jacquet to lead the way. Leaving a fallen comrade to die went against the grain for any soldier, but Ryan knew what had to be done.

A moment later, the gurgling breaths ceased and silence echoed amongst the rocks, telling its own story.

Jacquet hesitated, looking over his shoulder. Ryan reached out and gripped the young soldier’s shoulder in an attempt at reassurance, but there was nothing he could say or do to erase the sights and sounds of death from Jacquet’s eyes and ears, or excise the knowledge of what had just happened from his mind. The young soldier was just going to have to learn to live with it, the way Ryan had.

They made their way into the main part of the stone fortress at a run. A wide terrace spread out in front of them with impressive views over the river and the surrounding countryside. It looked every part of the 300 metres claimed by the guidebook, and from the panicked voices coming from the far end it was clear they’d have to move out into the open, presenting targets for the unnamed predators. It wasn’t a scenario that left much time for admiring the scenery, even if Ryan had been so inclined.

The sound of booted footsteps behind signalled Lafarge’s return. The look on the Frenchman’s face would have sent any human enemies scurrying for cover. Ryan knew Lafarge of old in a combat situation and was all too familiar with Lafarge’s own particular brand of calculating recklessness. The creatures they were facing weren’t the only predators around.

Lafarge still had his anti-shock glasses pushed back on his head amongst his ash-blond hair and his grey eyes burned with a cold ferocity. Ryan met his gaze unflinchingly. He knew what Lafarge had done and why. It went with the territory. He’d once told Lyle that if he was ever messed up that badly it would be down to Lyle to end things, not Stephen. There were some things that no lover should ever be asked to do. There were also some things that once done were never discussed, but Ryan hoped Lafarge knew he was not judging him.

Lafarge nodded, tight-lipped, and then they moved on together.

Ryan could see a man’s body sprawled in the middle of the terrace, blood pooled thickly around where his head should have been, and another body, a woman this time, lying next to the metal railing that protected the visitors from a sheer drop down to the stonework of the lowest level beside the road that wound through the valley. The woman lay unmoving, one hand sill clutching a brightly coloured bag. They both looked to be beyond help. Lafarge reported the casualties over the comms link, not even breaking stride as he moved across the terrace.

Ryan moved equally quickly, his eyes scanning the area for possible threats. Being out in the open was dangerous, but at least they had clear ground around them…

“Look up!” The shouted warning from Stephen came almost too late.

Ryan swung the barrel of his rifle up as a nightmarish figure dropped down on them from above, landing in their midst and then bounding up again as though it had springs for legs. The short burst from his rifle missed the rapidly-moving target, but the blast from Lafarge’s shotgun had a wider range and managed to wing it seconds before it knocked Jacquet backwards, breaking the young soldier’s hold on his assault rifle. The creature was too close now for any of them to get a shot at it. Ryan grabbed the long knife sheathed on his left leg and jumped forward, but he was too late.

Jacquet heaved the creature off him, his hand and arm covered in blood as he struck at it again, his own knife blade glinting in the sun.

“What the fuck is it?” Ryan asked, unable to keep a note of incredulity out of his voice.

Jacquet rolled to his knees and slashed at the creature’s thin throat, almost severing a hairless head that sported an impressive array of teeth in a lipless mouth. “Mort, j’espere.”

“It certainly looks dead to me,” Stephen agreed, crouching down next to the body whilst Ryan and Lafarge scanned the area for any more threats. After a swift examination he declared, “I’ve got no idea what it is or when or where it comes from.”

Over the comms link, Ryan heard Lafarge updating his teams.

The first kill in the battle for Roque Saint-Christophe might have gone to the predators, but the home team had just evened the score.

* * * * *

Stephen stared around the great rock fortress, wondering where the next onslaught would come from. A sudden burst of gunfire erupted somewhere behind them, coming at him both as echoes from the cliffs and directly over his radio earpiece. It sounded like either Garin’s team or Dupuy’s was under attack. He just hoped they’d been able to get the small group of injured civilians to the relative safety of the car park.

Lafarge moved on at a run across the terrace, leaving the other members of his team to deal with whatever was happening elsewhere. Stephen could see a small huddle of people on the far side of the terrace, three, maybe four crouched down beside something that looked like a wooden pulpit. As he ran up to join Lafarge and Ryan, he heard a woman calling out in English for help. The French captain stood to one side, letting Stephen try to lend some reassurance to the frightened victims of the attack. Lafarge held his shotgun held tightly in his hands as he remained on guard against a reappearance of the predators.

“Are any of you injured?” Stephen asked. He could see blood on the woman’s dress but she seemed unhurt.

“Yes. But not me.” She gestured at a man in his sixties propped up against the wall of the rock shelter, a scarf wound around his arm as another man held a wadded up jacket to his stomach. Blood had soaked through a beige linen shirt and the hands of the man who was pressing on wound in an attempt to stem the flow were red to the wrists.

“We need the medic,” Stephen said urgently. The man’s skin had taken on a nasty grey pallor and even as he spoke, Stephen knew he was wasting his breath.

Lafarge bent down and pressed his fingers against the casualty’s sun-reddened neck feeling for a pulse that they all knew wasn’t there. The man’s head lolled forward onto his blood-soaked chest.

“I’m sorry, but he’s gone,” Ryan said quietly to the dead man’s would-be helper.

The woman looked up at them, tears running down her face. “We didn’t even know his name. My husband’s a nurse. Everyone else ran, but we couldn’t leave him.”

“You did your best,” Stephen told her.

“What are those things?” her husband asked.

“We don’t know.” Honesty seemed the only policy in the circumstances. “Did anyone else get left behind?”

“They took a baby.” The woman pointed upwards. “One of them just ran off with it. They knocked one of the parents over the rail and the other one is there.” She indicated the dead body of the woman by the railings.”

“What’s your name?” Ryan asked.

Her reply was drowned out by a blast from Lafarge’s combat shotgun. The French Special Forces captain immediately racked the side on his weapon and fired again. A dark shape ran along the edge of the cliff above their heads like a giant spider, clinging to what looked like sheer rock without once losing its hold, even when hanging upside down. It took a third blast of the shotgun to bring it down. The creature hit the terrace and crumpled into a ball. The spider’s web had been successfully cut.

“Rouge 1, sit-rep maintenant!” Lafarge demanded into his microphone.

In another time and another place, Stephen might have been amused by the way the Académie française was fighting a losing battle against intrusions into the language, but just then he had his own battles to fight. He swung his borrowed rifle up to his shoulder and took a shot at the next predator to scurry into sight on the imposing cliff-face. He got lucky and the creature’s head exploded. It dropped down close to the other one and lay there in the bright sunlight, unmoving.

“Nice shooting,” Lafarge said quietly, before demanding again, “Garin, signaler!”

The sound of gunfire was all the response he got, but it was enough to tell them that Garin’s team was still under attack. But before Lafarge had time to react, Garin’s voice came over the radio, as calm under pressure as all the French soldiers. “Un peu plus d’un problème. Nous avons trouver cinq victimes et ces chose putains sommes partout.”

“D’accord.” Lafarge’s second in command would clearly have to get on with resolving his own problems. “Bleu 1, arriver maintenant!”

As Lafarge tried to contact Pierre Dupuy, the hard-faced, unsmiling unit leader of the Blue team, Stephen helped the woman to her feet. “My name’s Stephen. You’ve done all you can here. We need to have everyone ready to move. We have to get you out of here.”

She wiped her blood-stained hands on her trousers. She still looked deeply shocked, but at least she was reacting. “My name’s Alice. My husband’s Shane.”

A man in his mid-thirties nodded to Stephen as he tried to wipe blood off his hands on the red ruin of his teeshirt. His experience in nursing had no doubt given him some sort of edge in this situation, but that didn’t mean he’d necessarily cope any better than his wife if they ended up in a running battle for their lives. The third man, late fifties, maybe, carrying a walking stick that he now held like a club, gave Stephen a slight smile.

“Alan,” he said simply. “I tried to help.”

Stephen nodded. They’d all tried to help. It wasn’t their fault they’d been out-classed by the opposition. He turned to Lafarge and Ryan. “What’s the plan? Make a run for it and do our best to hold them off?”

Lafarge shook his head. “I need you with me. We go after the one that took the child. Ryan, you and Jacquet get these people to safety.”

Stephen exchanged glances with Ryan, sensing the hesitation behind his lover’s mask of professionalism. But with a baby’s life at risk, Ryan wasn’t going to put personal feelings ahead of the job that needed doing.

“We’ll get back as quickly as we can,” Ryan said. “Do me a favour and stay alive, Hart. Lester will bitch like fuck about the damage to détente if you cop it over here.”

“I’ll do my best,” Stephen said as he dropped the magazine out of his HK416, fed some more rounds in, and then shot the clip home again. “Where did the creature take the baby?” he asked Alice.

She pointed upwards, to a level above them, where the rock swept out over their heads and formed another ledge, no doubt a lot narrower, and more easily passable by things that appeared to be able to cling like limpets to a sheer overhang, than they would be by human beings.

“There are more levels up there,” the man called Alan said. “According to the booklet they used to take rope-access tours to other parts of the cliff-dwellings.” In response to Lafarge’s look of surprise, he added, “I used to be a climber. Someone from my club came here a few years ago. He said it was very impressive. If you look closely you can still see a lot of the ropes in place.”

“Thanks,” Stephen said. He’d done a fair bit of climbing over the years. Like Ryan, he preferred going up rather than down. Lyle’s hobby had never really appealed to him, and to this day he still couldn’t come to grips with the idea of Lester crawling around in muddy holes under the ground on his weekends off.

With the division of responsibility agreed, Stephen forced himself to focus on his part of the job. He knew Lafarge wanted him for his tracking skills and with a child’s life at stake, Stephen just hoped he was up to the task. He could see where Alice had pointed, but there was no way he or Lafarge could take the same route, but at the end of the ledge, past where the group had taken shelter, he could see a continuation of the rock terrace beyond the iron railings. Vegetation clung to the golden rock, but there it was scuffed in places, betraying the passing of something almost as large as a man.

Without waiting to see if Lafarge was following him, Stephen climbed over the railings and started to look for a way up. He gave an experimental tug on a rather manky looking piece of rope that seemed to lead up to the terrace above. He had no idea how long it had been there, but without too much thought for the consequences if it gave way, he slung his rifle over his back and started to make his way up the rock face, using the rope to assist his climb.

It wasn’t as bad as it first appeared. There were plenty of footholds, the legacy of numerous phases of building on the cliff, and the rock beneath his feet was dry, not slippery in any way.

If one of the creatures attached now, he would be a sitting duck, his assault rifle slung across his back and both hands occupied with the climb. He just hoped that if any of the predators turned up while he was otherwise occupied that Lafarge would be able to cover him. As quickly as he could, Stephen scrambled up the last few meters onto a narrow shelf, never more glad of possessing a decent head for heights than he was then.

“Rope free!” he yelled, signalling to Lafarge that it was his turn to trust his weight to the rope.

A burst of static in his ear drew a curse from him and he pulled out the earpiece and left it dangling by the plastic-coated wire.

Stephen wasn’t surprised to see the flickering light of an anomaly ahead of him on the narrow ledge. The interference with their comms units had warned him what to expect.

Of the predator and its prey, there was no sign.

* * * * *

With Jacquet on point and Ryan acting as rearguard, the three tourists hurried across the main terrace, heads hunched into their shoulders as if that would somehow make them more inconspicuous, for all the good that was likely to do them. Their exit strategy was being played out against a backdrop of gunshots punctuated by the occasional scream of terror.

Most of the radio traffic was in rapid-fire French that left Ryan struggling to follow, but occasionally one of the men, usually Eric Manaud, the comms specialist, would calmly repeat what had been said for Ryan’s benefit, leaving him impressed by the professionalism of Lafarge’s men. He doubted you’d get more multi-lingual in his own unit than Lyle’s ability to swear fluently in several European languages, and to order a beer in several more.

As they were with a few paces of the entrance to the tunnel in the rocks that led towards to the entrance building, Ryan heard a shouted warning from Manaud, clearly addressed to him. The words, “Ryan! Behind you!” being a definite clue to the fact that trouble was hard on his heels. Ryan whiled round, his figure already tightening on the trigger of his assault rifle.

The predator bounced away, swinging from one arm over the railing like a chimpanzee in a zoo. Still firing, he backed into the tunnel. A moment later, he heard a yell of, “Down, Capitaine!”

Acting on instinct, Ryan dropped to the ground in a crouch, leaning against the wall. The predator’s thin body temporarily blocked off the light entering the tunnel, but a sudden thunk in the semi-darkness made Ryan wonder what the fuck Jacquet had just done. A split second later, the creature staggered backwards and fell, a long spear protruding from its chest.

Ryan started in amazement before he remembered the racks of old fashioned weapons hanging from the wall in a reconstruction of life in the fortress during the Middle Ages.

The spear had certainly demonstrated stopping-power, which was exactly what they needed against something as hard to kill as a fucking cockroach. Ryan snatched one of the spears off the wall and hefted it in his hands, waiting to see if another predator would take the place of the dead one.

When a grey, skeletal shape appeared in the doorway of the tunnel, he wasn’t surprised. When one fell, another followed. Ryan drew his arm back and hurled the spear as hard and fast as he could. The predator jumped to one side, but in the narrow tunnel it had nowhere to go. The spear caught it a glancing blow on the ribs and before it had chance to retreat, Ryan had grabbed a second spear and sent it after the first. This time the beast was caught wrong-footed and the spear caught it low in the abdomen. Ryan followed up the success of the thrown spear with a three round burst from his assault rifle to the predators head. It fell backwards and Ryan knew it wasn’t getting up again.

“Keep moving!” he yelled to Jacquet. “Avance!” Ryan wasn’t sure how well his French was holding up, but the young soldier seemed to know what he wanted.

They hurried past a tableau of figures frozen in the act of what looked to be cooking a meal in the dimly-lit interior of one of the dwellings, with Ryan doing his best to cover their retreat and prevent it becoming a rout. Once they reached the end of the reconstruction, they would be at their most vulnerable as they emerged into daylight, their eyes now accustomed to the semi-darkness.

A burst from Jacquet’s rifle was devastatingly loud in the confines of the cliff-dwelling but then they were out and moving fast along the exterior path, the entrance building now in sight. As they ran headlong for what Ryan hoped was some measure of safety, they were joined by another small group of survivors, shepherded by Jean-Marc Andre, the unit medic. One woman was moaning in pain, a blood-soaked scarf held to the side of her face. Another woman was cradling what looked to be a badly torn arm, her ripped flesh in stark contrast to a cheerful summer dress, its yellow and white pattern now liberally splattered with blood. A man had a child in his arms and a teenager at his side.

The gendarmes waiting in the entrance buildings took charge of the wounded, hurrying them away to the relative safety of the car park, waiting for the ambulances to survive. A makeshift triage post had been set up next to the wooden building that housed a café and toilets, and several members of the public were busily doing what they could to bring some relief to the injured.

Ryan nodded in approval as Alice, Shane and Alan promptly went over to see if they could be any help. Andre, the medic, cast a swift professional eye over what was happening and echoed Ryan’s approval. He spoke briefly in rapid-fire French to one of the men, and had what looked to be a similar exchange with a young gendarme who was trying very hard to remain in control of the situation. He had Ryan’s sympathy. Numerous anomaly shouts had made it abundantly clear that dealing with the general public could be even harder work that corralling the animals they disgorged.

As Ryan, Jacquet and Andre made their way back though the entrance building and onto the footpath to the fortress, he heard the sound of booted feet on the stone steps ahead. A moment later, Eric Manaud came into site, the limp body of a teenage girl cradled in his arms. As he passed beneath the stone built doorway, under the watchful eye of one of life-sized models, a soldier from the Middle Ages complete with replica firearm, Ryan saw another shape spring up behind the model. He swung the HK416 up, firing by instinct rather than aiming carefully. Chips flew up from the stonework, sending the creature scurrying backwards, clinging to the rock like a lizard and moving every bit as nimbly.

Jacquet threw himself through the gateway his rifle raised. The young soldier fought with the same calm competence that Ryan’s own unit had so often been called on to display. A burst from his rifle finished what Ryan had started.

Manaud didn’t even break his stride. Even encumbered with heavy communications gear on his back and the dead weight of a teenager in his arms, the French special forces soldier moved smoothly and quickly, determined to get the casualty to safety, relying on his fellow soldiers to prevent any of the creatures following him.

“Red 1, we’re coming back in!” Ryan announced into his throat mic. “Lafarge? Can you hear me?” All that greeted his words was the crackle of static. Ryan cursed under his breath. He knew the havoc anomalies could cause with comms, and it looked like Lafarge and Stephen were too close to the magnetic field now for their radios to be any use.

He nodded to Jacquet and Andre and together they made their way back into Roque Saint-Christophe.


	4. Chapter 4

Stephen worked his way carefully across the rock ledge, looking for any signs to tell him where the predator had gone. Scuff marks on the golden sandstone led towards the anomaly but the biggest clue lay in a small scrap of white and blue, less than a metre from the flickering shards of time.

A child’s toy white rabbit wearing a blue cotton dress gave Stephen all the answers he needed and none of the ones he wanted. He picked up the toy and showed it to Lafarge.

“Merde!” Lafarge said softly but with feeling.

Stephen nodded. That was one way of putting it. If they wanted to know what had happened to the child they would have to follow its captor through the anomaly.

“What are the chances of the baby still being alive?” Lafarge asked.

Stephen shrugged and he knew it had only been a rhetorical question on the Frenchman’s part. The chances were slim to nonexistent, but he also knew that neither of them would be able to live with themselves if they simply walked away from the anomaly and carried on hunting the predators that had already come through. He tucked the toy into the pocket of his trousers, hoping against hope that he would have the chance to reunite it with its owner.

Lafarge lifted his shot gun to his shoulder in readiness and, looking a damn site more calm than he had any right to do, simply stepped up to the anomaly and walked through. Stephen took a deep breath and followed him.

The magnetic field pricked on his skin, raising goosebumps, and then he was through. Stephen exhaled slowly as he looked around, getting some idea of the landscape around him before he drew his first breath in what could easily be a poisonous atmosphere. They hadn’t met that particular hazard very often, but he knew to take care.

Tall, very obviously ruined buildings reared up in front on his and Stephen took in the ruin of a city, staring up into sightless windows, glass long since broken. Some tower blocks had started to crumble, rubble and timbers piled around them on what looked like a roadway complete with some extremely rusted cars, too far gone for him to make out anything more than their general shape.

Even as he cast around looking for something that might tell him where their quarry had gone, he was also doing his best to take in every detail of the scene surrounding them, already anticipating the debrief from this little excursion. Provided they made it back, that was. The prickle of hairs on the back of his neck told him all too clearly that he was being watched. Staring up at the wreckage of a once-busy city, Stephen could see the hairless, grey bodies of predators moving about, clinging onto the sides of buildings the same way they’d danced around the cliffs of Roque Saint-Christophe.

“Down!”

Lafarge’s yell took him by surprise, but Stephen didn’t waste time asking questions, he just dropped to the dusty ground, rolling onto his back and checking the area for immediate threats.

An insect swept past him as he rolled into a defensive crouch, as large, maybe even larger, than the giant dragonflies of the Carboniferous, but this was stockier in build, with massive, round, iridescent eyes and mantis-like legs drawn up beneath its thick body. He couldn’t tell at a first glance whether the creature was likely to be dangerous or not, but the blast from Lafarge’s combat shotgun told him that the French captain was taking no chances. The insect canted in the air like a helicopter whose rotor blades had just encountered an immoveable object and crashed on top of a car roof, collapsing it in a spray of rust.

Stephen could hear clicking noises all around him, sounding like giant cicadas, making him want to look up, keeping watch for any threat from above, but he forced his eyes back to the ground, trying to make sense of a jumble of tracks, trusting Lafarge to keep watch for trouble from the sky.

There was little by the way of a trail he could follow. Tracks criss-crossed the ground around the anomaly, but as far as he could tell, more had gone into it than seemed to have come out. He started to quarter the ground, moving further away from the anomaly on each pass. The dusty ground was good for showing marks, and after a few metres he thought a pattern was beginning to emerge. Something had moved away from the anomaly on three legs rather than four… marks that could be accounted for by using an arm to carry something…

“This way,” he told Lafarge. “I think I’ve got something.”

“Bon,” the Frenchman said calmly. “Because I’m not convinced the natives are friendly. And I don’t think the moustiques repellent I used this morning is going to be much use against these things.”

Stephen nodded at the shotgun Lafarge held in readiness. “That looks like a pretty good bug repellent to me.”

Together they sprinted across the open ground towards one of the buildings, following the trail Stephen had identified. Lafarge had taken down two flying insects and one predator by the time they had reached a wide sweep of concrete steps leading up to the base of a tall tower.

The sound of movement inside the building put the pair of them even more on their guard than they were already. Lafarge moved in front of Stephen, combat shotgun held in readiness. Stephen yielded precedence to the soldier. The Frenchman had the weapon with the greatest stopping power at close range, so it was now Stephen’s turn to act as rearguard.

The glass front of the building had long since been shattered. It looked like they were stepping into the aftermath of an earthquake, ceiling tiles and rubble crunching under their feet as they moved. There was no hope of approaching anything quietly in that building, but from what Stephen could see, they had no need of stealth, Two predators were locked in a bloody battle, grappling with each other on the floor.

They sprang apart for a moment, but took no notice whatsoever of the interlopers as they faced off against each other, oblivious to anything else.

“Over here!” Helen’s voice was unmistakeable and after Lafarge’s report of his encounter with her at the lake, not wholly surprising, either.

As Lafarge had reported, she was wearing a faded khaki shirt and trousers in the same colour that had seen better days. Her skin was bronzed by sun and wind, her hair roughly cut to shoulder-length, bleached by whatever skies she’d walked under. She was carrying a backpack and had a long-bladed knife in her hand. She looked calm and in control, despite the circumstances of their meeting.

“That fight won’t last long!” she called. “What you’re looking for is over here.”

That news jolted Stephen out of his shock and he crossed rapidly to her side. The baby was lying in what looked like a nest scraped out amongst the debris on the floor, lined with what looked like the papery wings of the giant insects, crushed and built up like dried straw. With it were what looked like newborn predators, mewling and crawling over each other, tiny jaws agape.

Stephen snatched up the baby, checking to see if it was still alive. A loud wail almost immediately gave him the answer.

“Couldn’t you bring yourself to pick it up?” he demanded. “You always did despise weakness, didn’t you, Helen?”

“Harsh, Stephen,” she replied, chiding him. “I tried to warn you about these things. Doesn’t that earn me the benefit of the doubt?” The question was clearly rhetorical as she added reprovingly, “I arrived here only moments before you. I wasn’t even aware they’d taken a child.”

The baby was still wrapped in a white shawl, liberally splattered with blood, but a rapid examination revealed that the blood had almost certainly belonged to the child’s parents, as the baby bore no signs of injury. Stephen pulled the white rabbit out of his pocket and tucked it inside the shawl. The baby held tight to the toy and its cries quietened. Stephen had bugger all experience of children and didn’t have the faintest idea even of the sex of this one, but if the parents had subscribed to any form of gender stereotyping, the blue baby-gro might be a clue.

The loud report of Lafarge’s shotgun promptly started the baby crying again. One of the huge insects had been showing too much of an interest in them and Lafarge had decided that discretion was the better part of valour. The insect landed close to the two battling predators, but neither of them took any as its corpse hit the debris on the floor amidst a spray of plaster dust.

A moment later, one of the creatures bit down heavily on its opponent’s neck and a spray of dark bloody fountained out.

“I think it is time to be on our way,” Lafarge commented.

The victorious predator tilted its head on one side, blood dripping from its lipless jaws.

“They hunt by echolocation,” Helen said.

“Where the fuck are we, Helen?” Stephen demanded.

She smiled the same smile she’d used on him when he’d been an impressionable student. The smile that had made him want to offer her his heart on a plate and a knife to cut it with. “Can’t you guess, Stephen?

With that, she stepped back into the shadows of the ruined building and vanished from his sight.

The predator moved towards the nest of infants, leaving Stephen wondering for a moment whether it was planning to defend them or eat them, but he had little desire to wait for the outcome. With a nod to Lafarge, they both turned and sprinted for the doorway, taking the steps outside three at a time.

Insects buzzed in the air like giant mosquitoes. Lafarge took down any that came too close, loading and reloading his shotgun on the run, as they covered the ground towards the anomaly. With the child in his arms, there was nothing Stephen could do to help. It was his job to keep the baby alive. The rest was up to Lafarge.

* * * * *

Ryan took the brunt of the fall on one arm, rolling over, his rifle held tightly to his chest. The predator’s leap carried it over him, but the creatures were lithe as well as fast and as soon as it realised it had missed on the first pass, it was on him almost immediately. Ryan swung the butt of the HK416 upwards, striking the lipless jaw hard and snapping its teeth together. He grabbed for the PAMAS G1 pistol holstered on his right thigh, preferring the heavier calibre bullet for close-quarter work. The predator’s claws raked at his chest, but failed to penetrate his light-weight but effective body armour.

A slash to the side of Ryan’s neck drew blood but his retaliation put him ahead on points as the creature’s chest cavity took two direct hits; the muzzle flash singing its flesh. Blood and bone fragments splattered Ryan’s face. He fired a second time and heaved the body of his opponent off him before delivering a coup de grace to the creature’s head as it convulsed on the ground.

A hand fisted in the material of his jacket and hauled him to his feet. “You are OK?” Raul Garin demanded.

Ryan nodded, holstering the pistol. They needed to start hunting the bastard things that had over-run Roque Saint-Christophe rather than being hunted by them. But on the plus side, it looked like they’d been successful in evacuating the civilians, though the place would need a full sweep once they’d gained control and they’d paid a heavy price for that success. Two more of Lafarge’s men were dead: another from Garin’s team and one from Dupuy’s.

Losses were hard to bear at any time, but three in one day was unprecedented. There would be time to analyse the fight later, but for now, doing unto others before they had the chance to do unto them was the order of the day. The sight of a dark figure scuttling towards them under the overhung cliff alerted Ryan to swing his rifle up to take the shot.

The loud crack of a rifle told him that someone else was equally alert. The predator dropped to the ground and a blast from Garin’s shotgun ensured that it wasn’t going to get up again.

A second predator moved into view. A second bullet took it down.

The sniping was coming from below the main terrace. With the civilians safely evacuated, Manaud had taken up station on the meadow beside the river and was talking advantage of his weapon’s range. Anything coming at them from above was now exposed and the comms specialist was a bloody good shot.

“Ryan!” The voice came from above him.

He stared up, adrenaline spiking through him as he recognised Stephen’s voice.

“Cover us!”

Something was being lowered carefully over the edge of the cliff above the main terrace. Stephen had wrapped something in his jacket, tied it up with the end of a rope and was now paying out the line very slowly.

With several sets of guns trained on the cliff, any predators that tried to approach the gently swaying green bundle were rapidly dispatched. Ryan slung his rifle over his shoulder, leaving Manaud and the others to provide cover as he ran to the foot of the cliff, his arms outstretched to grab whatever it was that Stephen was lowering so carefully.

A muffled cry from inside the thick material of the jacket gave Ryan all the information he needed. Stephen and Lafarge had found the child and it was alive.

* * * * *

“His grandparents have taken the child to their home,” Lafarge said, after downing a large measure out of the whisky bottle on the table in front of him. “The father is in hospital. He survived the fall from the terrace, but has multiple fractures. The medics say they think he will pull through. The child is not yet an orphan.”

The French captain reached for the bottle then topped up his glass and theirs with generous measures.

Stephen picked up his glass and knocked the spirit back in one. He’d seen too much death that day. Yes, they’d saved lives as well, but there were times when their victories felt hollow. A baby would now grow up never knowing its mother. Three families of the Special Forces soldiers were now mourning their losses, never able to know the truth of how their loved ones had died. Lafarge’s eyes looked empty of all emotion, but Stephen knew that his composure was no more than skin deep. He’d had to do things that day that no commander should ever have to face, but Stephen also knew all too well that the unimaginable was now a part of his daily life, as it was for Lafarge. Stephen just hoped that he would never be called upon to perform the same mercy.

He felt a warm touch on his arm. Ryan’s eyes held a world of empathy. “You brought the child back. Remember that.”

“But where the fuck from?” The memories of what he’d seen on the far side of the anomaly were still raw. “Where the hell were we, Ryan? There were cars… buildings… all broken. The whole fucking world was a mess. What the hell had happened to the people?”

“And why the fucking hell did Helen choose today to put in an appearance?” Ryan said, knocking his own drink back before refilling their glasses again.

“There is history between you,” Lafarge said, his words a statement rather than a question.

“You could say that,” Ryan acknowledged. “I’d sooner buy a used car off a bloke in a pub in Bootle than believe a bloody word she says, but she was right about those fuckers we went up against today.”

“So why does she not tell us what she knows rather than talk in riddles?” Lafarge asked.

“Have you heard the fable of the fox and the scorpion?” Stephen asked. In response to Lafrage’s raised eyebrows, he continued, “A fox and a scorpion both need to cross a river. The scorpion asks the fox for a ride on its back as it can’t swim. The fox refuses saying, ‘No you’ll sting me’. The scorpion says that it won’t, as that would damage both of them. The fox agrees and allows the scorpion to ride on its back. Half way across the river the scorpion stings the fox. As the venom takes effect on the fox and it starts to sink it asks the scorpion, ‘Why? Why did you sting me? Now we are both going to die?’ The scorpion replies, ‘I couldn’t help myself, it’s in my nature.’ That’s Helen for you. She causes trouble as naturally as she breathes. It’s in her nature.”

Lafarge’s grey eyes were as unreadable as if he still wore his reflective sunglasses, but after a long moment, he drained his glass and reached for the bottle. “Then we will be on our guard against her, my friends. As I hope you will be, too.” He raised his glass. “Détente et dinosaures!”

Stephen and Ryan raised their glasses to the same toast.

“Détente et dinosaurs!”

After another moment of silence, Lafarge added, “To those we have lost. We shall remember them.”

Their glasses chinked together. Stephen would not forget any of the men by whose side he’d fought in Roque Saint-Christophe. Nor would he forget what they’d fought against.

Or where the anomaly had taken them.


End file.
